Letters To the Editor

Ravitch Clarifies Stance On E.D. Research Funding

To the Editor:

In a recent article, you state that I advocated, in a recent
Forbes magazine article, the abolition of federal support for
education research (related story
).
This is not accurate. I recommended the elimination of the U.S.
Education Department; I did not recommend the elimination of the
federal role in education, nor of federally funded research in
education.

What I intended to recommend was that the department be replaced by
an effective, well-focused Office of Education and that certain vital
federal functions be preserved, including the National Center for
Education Statistics, the National Assessment of Educational Progress,
Head Start, aid to disadvantaged children, and aid to college
students.

Unfortunately, the Forbes article was edited drastically
without my participation, emphasizing my criticisms of the department
(for example, the regulatory burdens it imposes on schools and
districts), but deleting my proposals for a slimmed-down, clarified
federal role. As a writer, I have never had an experience like this
with a publication; the copy editor called to apologize after the fact,
but it was little consolation for seeing my views distorted.

There are serious issues being debated today about what the federal
government should and should not be doing in education. I regret that
my own views entered the debate in so truncated and unconstructive a
fashion.

Diane Ravitch
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Tapping Businesses for Funds Dubbed 'Foolhardy' at Best

To the Editor:

Christopher Cross's analysis of the corporate philanthropic climate
should be required reading for governors, senators, and Congressional
representatives who are slashing aid to schools (related story
).

The universal cry from politicos seems to be a new mandate to
schools to raise funds for services through the private sector, local
and regional businesses. This plan sounds simple and do-able, except if
you are actually at the local level, where we are finding that
businesses would like to help, but are already squeezed to the limit
with demands on their charitable resources.

Traditional fund-raising targets local business through the United
Way, blood drives, food drives, sponsorship of Little League, etc.
P.T.A..'s help out in many ways, providing additional funds for
computers, library books, trips, cultural activities--but they, too,
are stretched to the limit.

In a time of leaner business budgets, it is foolhardy for our
political leaders to direct school personnel to look to business as a
continuing source of funds. Everyone is downsizing, including schools
systems. Expecting fewer people to do more doesn't guarantee
high-quality results. Schools are in the business of education, not
fund-raising, and should do what they do best: educate today's students
to be tomorrow's productive citizens.

Schools need and deserve stable, reliable, and sufficient government
resources to do their important work.

Liberal Public Education Includes World's Religions

To the Editor:

In your June 14, 1995, issue you ran several letters from
individuals who were critical of my recent Commentary on religion and
secular indoctrination (related story
). Astonishingly, two
writers thought I was arguing for a thesis which I explicitly rejected.
A. Hewitt Rose took me to be promoting the "One True Religion" (his
phrase) and Steven Morris claimed I would have only my own "mythology
of Adam and Eve" (his phrase) taught in public schools.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I wrote: "It is not open to
schools to promote or practice religion." I argued on constitutional
grounds for neutrality in matters of religion. Indeed, the basic thrust
of my Commentary was that a public school education must be liberal: It
"should provide students with some understanding of the major points of
view in the most important matters of the human experience."

I did argue that "to ignore religion is to be profoundly illiberal."
Unfortunately, all too many educators assume that anyone who wants
religion in the curriculum must have an illiberal, unconstitutional,
and probably fundamentalist religious agenda in doing so. This, of
course, is nonsense.

To be educated one must be able to think critically about
alternative ways of making sense of the world in a pluralistic culture.
I argued that the systematic exclusion of religion from the curriculum
results in secular indoctrination. It was my purpose to open up the
marketplace of ideas, to educate students so that they could think
critically about secular and religious ways of understanding the world.
And I made my arguments, as I said in my Commentary, on liberal and
entirely secular grounds.

Both Mr. Rose and Mr. Morris argued that education should be limited
to the claims of reason and evidence which they can take to be on the
side of secular science rather than religion. Of course this is a
controversial view: Many scholars (ranging from theologians in quite
different religious traditions to secular postmodernists) disagree.

My position is that when we are deeply divided about the nature of
truth and reality, as we are in our culture, it is obligatory for
educators, particularly in public schools governed by the First
Amendment, to educate students about the alternatives, rather than
convey, uncritically, only secular views.

Warren A. Nord
Director
Program in the Humanities and Human Values
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, N.C.

'Clear Link' Between Access to Books, Ability

To the Editor:

It must be more than coincidence that California ranks near the
bottom of the country in 4th-grade reading scores and also ranks near
the bottom in school-library quality (related story
).
The story points out that Mr. Boyer is a practicing Quaker and that he
places great emphasis on listening to others. He is described as
believing that a "resurgence of individualism and privatism threatens
to undermine the institution of public education and its historic
function of unifying a diverse people." Further, he is "puzzled and
alarmed by ... [a] growing suspicion of government" and "disturbed by
the popularity of the charter-school movement in state
legislatures."

What troubles me about all of this is the following: As a Quaker,
Ernest Boyer, more so than others, ought to be familiar with his own
tradition's suspicion of centralized power and with the role that both
church and state played historically in pressuring Quakers and others
to violate their consciences (what Quakers sometimes refer to as "the
light within").

Mr. Boyer must also know that the founders of the common school in
America were not just interested in teaching reading and other basic
skills. Horace Mann and compatriots wanted to keep immigrant Catholics
and other foreigners in line by enrolling their children in the common
school, the melting pot that would refine away all the foreign and
papist dross (or, in the case of Calvinists, for whom Horace Mann had
an especially deep dislike, would help shelter children from the
corrupting influence of church and parents).

Presumably Mr. Boyer also knows that the common school for most of
its 150 years of existence has not been particularly congenial to Jews,
humanists, atheists, and other cognitive and religious minorities. And
he must surely be aware of the crucial role independent schools have
played in the life of Quakers.

Finally, if he is following his own advice about listening to
others, he must know that millions of Americans maintain that
government public schools violate their deepest religious and moral
beliefs.

One would hope that Mr. Boyer will reflect on the fact that he lends
his support to a monopoly system of school finance that permits only
the rich and the well-connected to educate their children in a way that
is consistent with their own deepest religious beliefs, a system that
by its own admission would be in deep trouble if it permitted people to
vote with their feet.

By ignoring and even opposing school choice, including the choice of
independent religious schools, Mr. Boyer puts millions of Americans in
a position not unlike that of Quakers three centuries ago.

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